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Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of Mankind is Man… He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest, In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast —— Alexander Pope, 1733

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The Prime Directive: Similarity without reference to the LCA is similarity without meaning (we will come back to this) That is romantic, and in 1733 man’s place in the biological world was a mystery. But now we now know how we fit in. For each species that enters a psychology lab, we have descended from a “last common ancestor”– the LCA Which leads to:

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Let’s look at an example highly relevant to episodic memory amniotes dinosaurs* birds crocodiles snakes & lizards turtles monotremes marsupials placentals lissamphibians mammals Depiction of a primitive amniote (the LCA of primates & birds) The cladogram below shows that the amniotes leading to mammals and those leading to birds diverged early in amniote history LCA

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If the LCA had conscious event memory and MTT, there should be evidence for such advanced cognition in its other descendants Putting these ideas in a comparative context does not disprove anything, but ask yourself: does it really pass the ‘smell test’? amniotes dinosaurs* birds crocodiles snakes & lizards turtles monotremes marsupials placentals lissamphibians mammals Scrub jays and humans show similarities, but these are likely due to parallel and independent evolution Otherwise, one has to believe that the LCA, a fairly primitive amniote that lived about 320 million years ago, had the same advanced cognitive capacities that characterize human episodic memory

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Anything can be homologous: Structures Behaviors Physiological processes Metabolic pathways Genetic sequences et cetera Provided that they have been inherited from the LCA If not, then any similarities are homoplaseous and all bets are off about mechanisms & “circuits” Similarity is not enough: similarity without reference to the LCA is similarity without meaning

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So what can monkeys tell us about our “constructs” when we can’t study the LCA? Construct 1: Episodic memory Construct 2: Recognition memory

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So what can monkeys tell us about memory when we can’t study the LCA? MTL damage in humans produces amnesia, but early attempts to replicate effects on memory after MTL lesions in monkeys failed –no effects of MTL lesions on object discriminations Orbach, Milner and Rasmussen, 1960 Correll and Scoville, 1965 –no effects of MTL lesions on delay tasks Correll and Scoville, 1967 Roughly 20 years without major advances in monkey “model” of human memory Is there a species difference? Have humans and monkeys diverged that much??

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“This close correspondence of [MTL lesion] effects in the two species implies... that the clinical syndrome, like the experimental one, could indeed be the result of combined damage to the amygdala and hippocampus...” Mishkin et al. (1982) Then, Mishkin concluded that humans and monkeys are alike, after all An apparent behavioral homology, and so …

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The orthodox monkey model of memory was born: Monkeys and humans have inherited a medial temporal lobe “memory system” from their LCA This system includes the episodic memory mechanism How did this orthodoxy come about?

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This finding & others led to the current orthodoxy : MTL in monkeys has the same function as MTL in humans In humans, that function is conscious memory But in monkeys, all memories are assessed by performance, and so we have a problem “the fundamental distinction is between the capacity for conscious recollection of facts and events (declarative memory) and nondeclarative memory, which supports … forms of memory that are expressed through performance rather than recollection.”—Clark, Manns & Squire, 2002

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Despite this problem, the main tenets of the current orthodoxy remain : MTL is a single “thing” It (and therefore the hippocampus) subserves conscious (declarative) memory – as demonstrated by the role of hippocampus in visual recognition (DNMS) It does not contribute to subconscious (procedural, implicit) memory It does not function in perception Facts Events Skills Priming Classical Other Memory Declarative Squire, 1987 Procedural

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But the current orthodoxy is wrong : Monkey studies show that MTL is NOT a single “thing” Monkey studies also show that the hippocampus is NOT critical for visual recognition In humans, MTL DOES contribute to implicit spatial memory (Chun & Phelps, 1999) & perception (Lee et al., 2005a, b) Monkey and human studies show that part of the traditional MTL (PRh) DOES function in perception (Murray, Bussey & Saksida, 2007) The first two points are now taken up, in turn The other two are topics for another time

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So what, after all, have monkeys and humans inherited from their LCA?  A hippocampus-dependent fast learning mechanism  The hippocampus is, of course, a part of the cerebral cortex; other parts of the cortex, including PRh, subserve slow learning  This fast learning system is important for episodic memory (event capture), but not only that  And the hippocampus does what it has been doing since being inherited from the LCA of the amniotes

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What is the state of the field in measuring this “construct”? Are there significant limitations in comparing the “construct” across species? Animals models are problematic because the constructs (declarative memory, cognitive memory, episodic memory) depend on consciousness, by whatever label used for it. Are the known neural substrates relevant to neural circuits recruited by this “construct” in humans? Yes, but similarity without reference to the LCA is similarity without meaning. Ideas about how a treatment strategy (pharmacological, cognitive/behavioral) could target this construct A focus on ‘fast’ learning, as opposed to dogmatic ‘tests’ of declarative memory in animals is one way forward. Discussion points: